Our future home on the web:
The Cambridge Closet Collective was founded by Rebecca Gatto during her MBA program at the University of Cambridge, as a project for Student Hubs’ Engage for Change program.
The idea came from lived experience: after moving to Cambridge with her family, including her three-year-old son, Rebecca found herself without her community and the local knowledge that previously enabled her to receive hand-me-down clothing for free, or shop for it inexpensively. Cambridge’s charity shops often stock adult clothing exclusively, and after asking local parents on the playground where they found secondhand kids’ clothes, someone suggested Vinted. This online marketplace was an acceptable temporary substitute, but ordering secondhand clothes through the app from sellers, waiting several days for delivery, and having no way to dispose of items that didn’t fit as expected meant the process was less than perfect.
After being accepted to the Engage for Change program, Rebecca approached her son’s daycare about setting up a clothing library. After all, since the daycare is affiliated with the University, many parents come from other places and are likely to have the same questions and needs.
The nursery embraced the idea, and the first Cambridge Closet is currently in progress. In order to make this solution available to more people, Rebecca committed to creating a template for others to easily start programs in their own communities.
<aside> 🌱 Mission & Vision: The Cambridge closet collective makes it easy and fun for parents to swap clothes as their kids grow by placing community-managed clothing libraries in daycares. We envision a world where reusing clothes is easy, attractive, and most of all, normal, and where buying new clothing for kids is a last resort.
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Here, you will find fill-in-the-blank email templates that take your project from idea to reality. These will include:
Here, you will find pre-made posters, fliers, and more. These will include: